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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29150007">Chianti</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBreakfastGenie/pseuds/TheBreakfastGenie'>TheBreakfastGenie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The West Wing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Episode: s07e01 The Ticket, F/M, Friendship, Gen, I don't think Danny even has any lines, Melancholy, Post-Canon, Toby POV, all the romantic couples are deep background, despite the summary no one is seriously injured, technically it's about a dinner party</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:09:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,355</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29150007</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBreakfastGenie/pseuds/TheBreakfastGenie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The bag hits the ground with her, and the bottle breaks, spilling dark wine all over the driveway. </p><p>He stares at the dark liquid spreading over the ground, staining the ice. It’s more purple than red, but it might as well be blood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>C. J. Cregg &amp; Toby Ziegler, Danny Concannon/C. J. Cregg, Josh Lyman &amp; Toby Ziegler, Josh Lyman/Donna Moss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Chianti</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've been trying to get back into West Wing fic after a couple of years, and I have three WIPs I've been staring at for weeks, and then this. I don't know what it is. I don't know where it came from. I wrote it in about an hour and a half. I'm sure it has something to do with the project proposal I haven't done. It's not as melancholy as it sounds! It's sad, but happy too, and hopeful. Everybody's situation is based on the flash-forward from The Ticket.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s two weeks after the snowstorm that blanketed New York City. A week ago it broke thirty degrees, pushed thirty five, even, and the clouds parted and the January sun turned the snow into slush. Then the western hemisphere rolled away on its usual course and the temperature dropped to single digits and the five inches of gooey slush froze over into cold, hard ice.</p><p>He lives in Queens, even though he could afford Brooklyn, and he covers the driveway with salt but it’s not enough. Danny’s passing through on another book tour and Toby’s arranged for him to give a lecture at Columbia. Maybe it was just a pretense. Maybe he knew CJ well enough to know she’d want to join him. He said they could bring the baby, but they left her with Danny’s parents. <em>I want some adult time</em>, CJ said. Maybe he just missed her, missed everyone, because it was his idea to ask Josh and Donna up for the weekend. A family reunion, of sorts, except Sam couldn’t make it. <em>Another time</em>, he promised apologetically.</p><p>New York was cold and lonely, but there wasn’t anywhere else that was any better. Their circle had scattered. Josh, Donna, and Sam are still in Washington, but they have a new circle now, full of people who only know him by reputation. He stays away from Baltimore for Andrea’s sake, and sees Huck and Molly on alternate weekends.</p><p>Their rooms are empty, but still, twin beds, so his friends stay in hotels. CJ and Danny drive back from Columbia with him. Josh and Donna arrive two hours later; he doesn’t want to know what they were doing in between. After years of acting like an old married couple, Josh and Donna have learned how to be newlyweds, reveling in the freedom they have with each other. He’s happy for them, but he’s still divorced. Donna is carrying a paper bag wrapped around a bottle of wine. He knows it’s a chianti, because as they’re coming up the driveway Josh growls</p><p>“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”</p><p>Toby wants to smile, but he knows that’s not what Josh will expect, so he says</p><p>“We’re having lasagna.”</p><p>“Lasagna’s not kosher, is it?” CJ asks, already three quarters of the way through some aperitif she concocted with ingredients he didn’t know he had.</p><p>“Toby doesn’t keep kosher,” Josh says, and it’s somewhere in between the discussion of religion and Toby’s dietary choices that the heel of Donna’s boot strikes a patch of ice, and Donna goes down.</p><p>The bag hits the ground with her, and the bottle breaks, spilling dark wine all over the driveway.</p><p>Donna is fine. Her hip is bruised, and her hands are scraped up, but there’s no need for emergency medical attention. She breathes hard for a few minutes, but she doesn’t cry. He’s impressed. He thinks he would have cried. Josh helps her up, carefully stepping over the thirty two dollars of his salary seeping into the ice. Toby offers her a hot bath, and she gratefully accepts. CJ helps her to the bathroom. Josh goes back to the hotel to get her a change of clothes. Danny goes out for more wine.</p><p>Toby goes outside to sweep up the glass, before his neighbors kill him. The stoop light comes equipped with a fluorescent bulb. It floods the driveway, bouncing off the ice and the broken glass directly into his eyes. He stares at the dark liquid spreading over the ground, staining the ice. It’s more purple than red, but it might as well be blood.</p><p>He still has nightmares, sometimes. Not often, but he has them. <em>Didn’t you hear me shouting for you</em>? He always wakes up. He makes coffee and he remembers that Josh woke up, too. By the time the coffee is ready he shakes it off.</p><p>He tried therapy, once, but the nightmares didn’t go away. He doesn’t shoot up in the middle of the night. He doesn’t break out in a cold sweat. He just remembers. He thinks he got off easy, with just remembering. He wanted to grab Josh by the shoulders, that December, to shake, to shout <em>can’t you hear me</em>?</p><p>There isn’t much traffic tonight. The street is unusually quiet. Most of his neighbors are out, maybe at the theatre, or dinner parties of their own. The nightmares are quiet. It was loud, that night, but in his dreams it sneaks up on him. He thinks it’s because Josh was quiet, his voice snatched away by the bullet in his chest.</p><p>After so many years, a small part of Josh lives in his head. CJ’s in there, too, and Sam, and Jed Bartlet scolding him and praising him in the same breath. If he kept them close to him, sometimes they leapt out of his head and back into their own.</p><p>The glass flew further than he thought, pushing past the edges of fluorescent spotlight. He pokes at it with the broom. The chill starts to seep through his jacket. He shivers. He’s getting old.</p><p>Just when he’s deciding whether he likes his neighbors enough to care whether glass gets lodged in their tires, headlights wash over him as a car pulls up. A door slams and Josh gets out.</p><p>“I’ll help you with that,” he says. “I just need to take this to Donna.”</p><p>Josh goes inside. He comes back with a flashlight. They work their way around the perimeter, Josh holding the light while Toby sweeps.</p><p>“How’s Donna?” he asks.</p><p>“She’s fine. CJ made her a hot toddy.”</p><p>Josh smiles as he answers, but it doesn’t last. Toby understands. It’s a pensive atmosphere.</p><p>“I was just thinking,” Josh says after a moment, “about the poor schmuck who had to clean up the street outside my apartment.”</p><p>Toby doesn’t know what to say. He didn’t expect Josh to talk about it, but he can’t imagine talking about anything else.</p><p>“I should’ve written him a thank you note. I don’t even know his name.”</p><p>Toby talked to his students, once, about Rosslyn. No one remembered Stephanie Abbott’s name. No one remembered Ron Butterfield’s. In three more years, no one will remember Josh’s name either. He doesn’t talk to them about Rosslyn anymore.</p><p>They’ve worked their way back to where they started. Toby empties the dustpan full of broken glass into the dumpster. Silently, they go inside.</p><p>The inside of his apartment is bright, a sharp contrast to the blue fluorescence in the parking lot. CJ has put on a jazz record.</p><p>“Toby!” she grins, running over to him. He’s dizzy. He can’t remember his apartment being this warm.</p><p>Donna has dried her hair and changed into the slacks and sweater Josh brought for her. She’s sitting lopsided on the couch, perched on a stack of cushions. Josh puts an arm around her shoulders and squeezes.</p><p>“How’s my girl?” he asks. She swats him playfully.</p><p>Danny comes back five minutes later. They make the requisite jokes about handling the wine with care, then they uncork it. CJ remembered to keep the lasagna warm in the oven.</p><p>They have a lovely evening. Toby doesn’t think about the stain on the ground, except once, when CJ and Donna are laughing over each other as they try to recount some tale to Danny, each sentence making less sense than the last. Toby is too tired to follow their tipsy chatter, and Josh must be, too, because they catch each other’s eye, just for a moment, and they know what they’re both thinking.</p><p>Someone brings out tiramisu from an Italian bakery, and brandy. And then they go.</p><p>CJ kisses his cheek. Josh hugs him, and he pretends he doesn’t like it.</p><p>“There’s an opening at Georgetown,” Josh whispers as he pats his back. “I just thought you might want to know. In case you want to be closer to the kids.”</p><p>Toby thinks Josh wants to say <em>and closer to me</em>. But maybe that’s just what Toby wants to hear.<br/>Still, he thinks, as he rinses streaks of chianti out of wineglasses. Georgetown.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sam isn't there because I didn't really know what to do with him, and I liked the dynamic of the group not being quite complete, but feel free to interpret it however you want. </p><p>I have a headcanon that Toby leaves Columbia and goes to Georgetown, because it makes no sense that he would live in New York when his kids live in Baltimore/DC. </p><p>The inspiration for this was I stepped on some ice while carrying a bottle of chianti and thought about how upset I would have been if I had slipped and broken it. I have also held a flashlight while someone swept up broken glass in a parking lot in the middle of the night, but these experiences are unrelated. </p><p>I hope you enjoyed! If you liked it, please let me know! Feel free to find me on tumblr, same bat name, same bat channel.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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